Know Thyself
by PhantomPenguin
Summary: "Oh, Rum," she finally breathed, tilting her face up to display far more tenderness and compassion than he ever deserved, "it's not that at all. I trust you more than anyone." Her arms slipped around his shoulder in a movement both possessive and tender. "I love you. It's my own mind I can't trust." Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

Well, I seem to be on quite a roll with posting fics! I suppose being trapped in the hospital with nothing to do lends itself quite nicely to an increase in story production. This started as a sweet and utterly plot-less drabble and turned into something...else. Yay for fluffy angst.

As always, read, enjoy, and please review!

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"Are your meetings with Dr. Hopper beneficial?" he asked abruptly, planting his can in the ground and stopping her mid-stride with a hand on her arm. Belle turned and looked at him quizzically, eyes brimming with a myriad of unasked questions. One corner of his mouth turned up in a half-smile, his equivalent of an embarrassed shrug.

"Have to make sure sweet Archie isn't tormenting your little Belle?" she teased, curling one hand around his forearm and giving a light squeeze to try to ease some of the tension that held his body taught as a drawn wire.

"'Sweet Archie'?" he inquired, lifting one brow. His mouth quirked up in a rare, genuine smile nevertheless, and he yielded to her demanding tug, allowing her to pull his arms away from where he held them almost defensively against himself.

"He is sweet," she declared, moving closer to him and tucking herself against his chest, drawing his arms around her waist and resting her head against his shoulder, "But you are sweeter, Rumplestiltskin."

His other brow rose to join the other even as his arms followed her guidance and curled snugly about her, hands skimming up and down her sides. "I am hardly sweet, dear," he averred, amusement growing in his rich brown eyes. "Quite the opposite, I would say."

Belle shook her head, nose swiping his neck and tickling the sensitive hollow of his throat. "Mmmm, I beg to differ." Her pink tongue flicked out and followed the path of her nose, tracing a light pattern across the soft skin spread out before her like a blank canvas.

He closed his eyes, a low growl rumbling in his chest. His throat convulsed as he swallowed, body shaking in a visible display of his struggle to restrain himself.

Feeling his restlessness, Belle laughed into his neck, nipping lightly at his flushed skin. "Sweet," she reiterating, drawing her tongue one final time across the red mark she had left before drawing away, blue eyes dancing wickedly.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, face flushed and eyes heavy-lidded. Giving her a searing, scorching look that all but devoured her where she stood, he brought her back into his arms in one fluid motion and crushed his lips against her own. Long, clever fingers skimmed up and down her back and sides, leaving trails of fire curling leisurely through her body, the gentle touch a jarring contrast to the driving movements of his mouth and teeth against hers. He swiped his tongue across her lips, slipping it into her mouth as she moaned into the caress and opened to allow him access.

Belle clutched his shoulders, slanting her mouth to allow him better access and sighing heavily into the kiss, molding herself against Rumplestiltskin's body.

The kiss was passionate, possessive, and oh so him—demanding ownership and reciprocation, yet simultaneously conveying the depth of the emotions that he so very rarely allowed himself to express verbally. It was the perfect moment, out there in the fresh evening air, the brisk winter wind whipping about them and providing the perfect cool contrast to the flames that licked through their bodies.

Finally, Rumplestiltskin withdrew, panting heavily and looking down at Belle with an infuriatingly _knowing _smirk. "You are quite adept at knowing how to distract me, love," he conceded, drawing her back into their easy stroll toward his home, as casual as though their passionate interlude had never occurred, "but you forget that I have been playing this game for far longer." Reaching the massive pink house, he unlocked the door with a casual wave of his hand and a haze of purple smoke, not bothering to stop and fumble with the keys buried in his coat pocket.

Belle bit her lip to hide a smile and didn't answer, ducking under his outstretched arm that held open the door and bustling about the room, busying herself with the task of illuminating the darkened house.

Another casual flick of Rumplestiltskin's hand had a blazing fire roaring in the stone hearth of the living room, and soon the duo was settled down on the couch with mugs of tea resting on the coffee table before them.

"You never did answer my question, love," Rumplestiltskin prompted, titling his head to look down at the woman nestled into his side.

"Mmm." She blinked, forcing sleep-heavy eyes to open and meet his own in a drowsy gaze. "About my therapy sessions?" she asked blearily, voice thick with slumber.

"Yes," he nodded, eyeing her keenly and with no small amount of concern swimming in all-too-human eyes. Tentatively, as though she were porcelain on the brink of shattering, he carded a hand through her hair, smoothing the thick curls away from her face and massaging her scalp.

In her groggy state, she was less secretive, less closeted about any of the negative emotions he knew she felt but kept locked away. "Yes," she murmured. "They help…I can let go and relax."

He flinched, shoulders jerking back into a stiff posture as he recoiled from her, freezing mid-motion as she made a muted noise of disapproval. "I don't want you to feel uncomfortable or upset about anything," he confessed softly. "I don't want you to feel as though you have anything to fear from me, as though you can't speak your mind around me."

"Not around _you_," she murmured, still floundering out of her sleepy haze. She fell silent, running his words through her head over and over again as she emerged from her sleep-addled state, tucking herself even more firmly into his chest in a movement that belied her full return to awareness. "Oh, Rum," she finally breathed, tilting her face up to display far more tenderness and compassion than he ever deserved, "it's not that at _all_. I trust you more than anyone." Her arms slipped around his shoulder in a movement both possessive and tender. "I _love _you. It's my _own _mind I can't trust."

Her palms cradled his cheeks, thumbs smoothing away lines carved by years of worry and wear. "My sessions with Archie…I have all these emotions built up within me and no outlet," she confessed softly, her fingers still dancing softly across his sin. "Rum, I don't know how to experience any negative emotions; I've been trapped with them for so long that they are dull, numb. I sat so long in the dark—" his heart pulled at him agonizingly, guilt clawing at his soul—"that I don't know how to let it all out. I get angry sometimes, I can feel and express sadness well enough, but most—most I mask behind something positive and bury it deep within me.

The hands on his face trembled, and her soft inhalation shook with suppressed tears. "No on deserves to be burdened by _my _unhappiness, especially you. You've suffered so much already." She sniffed, arms slipping to sit limply at her sides.

Rumplestiltskin sat frozen in place, Belle's self-deprecating words tumbling over and over again in his head. His sweet Belle—the most compassionate, loving person he had ever met—believed herself unimportant, felt herself to be a burden. "Never, sweetheart," he avowed, the ferocious intensity of his voice startling them both. "_Never." _In a movement that mirrored her earlier actions, he took her face in his hands, gently brushing away her tears with a soothing sweep of his thumbs across her porcelain cheeks.

"Never a burden, never broken." His own hands now shook as they moved to brush through her hair, one dropping to her shoulders to pull her more snugly against his chest. "_Everyone_ deserves to emote," he stressed, closing his eyes in guilty pain as he dwelled on the sheer sense of unworthiness her words conveyed. "Negative feelings are part of being human, part of living."

"Belle," he said, inwardly flinching away from the thoughts that clamored to accuse him for all of her misfortune, "you've survived so much hardship. You, more than anyone should _have _those negative emotions, should let them out before they overwhelm you. You don't deserve to suffer any longer." The harsh lines of his face, drawn taut by worry, softened and he tilted her head upward to look tenderly into her haunted, honeyed eyes. "Bell, I _love _you." It was one of the rare times he allowed himself to voice his feelings, and the emotion packed into those four words was overpowering. "Let me help you; let yourself _feel_." He brought his trembling hand to her face to trace his fingertips across her damp cheeks.

His words were the trigger Belle had been subconsciously seeking, the catalyst that set the flood of emotion in motion. Belle gasped, her breath catching in her throat, and cast herself into Rumplestiltskin's waiting embrace, burying her face in the neck of his shirt and sobbing into his chest. "It's all so _much."_ The words came out haltingly, slowed by her tears and lingering reservations, her body wracked by tremors as she cleansed herself of all the toxic feelings that had been accumulating for countless years. "I—I hate her for locking me away, for _torturing _me with solitude. I'm _terrified _of enclosed spaces, of being trapped." She took a great, shuddering breath. "I left you and almost never saw you again, I'm jumping at shadows in the dark, I worry that maybe I _am _insane, that all those years spent alone in darkness were just a punishment I deserved, that you could never want someone so broken—"

He had been content to sit and hold her, allowing the onslaught of emotions to roll over him in a vicious stampede, bringing fresh surges of guilty regret and sheer agony to his own mind as he castigated himself for allowing such misery to befall his Belle. Her final statement snapped him out of the throes of self-loathing, seizing him by the hair and ripping him back to reality. "Never broken," he rasped, a repeat of his earlier avowal. Clutching her to him as tightly as he dared, as tenderly as though she were some ethereal mist, he sighed into the top of her head. "Never broken, never beaten." He was so distraught, so caught up in her pain that full sentences escaped him. "Always loved," he whispered, ghosting his lips across the crown of her head. "You are always loved, my Belle."

The words repeated themselves over and over again, hovering between them as if seeking to drive the point home. They had both been broken in some way, both beaten down by long years of loneliness and hardship, haunted by separation and guilt and so much seclusion and silence. Broken, beaten, yes—but not defeated.

Sitting there in Rumplestiltskin's house, with his arms curled around her and her nose buried in his chest, wrapped in love and blanketed by the unique combination of tentative and powerful affection that was uniquely him, Belle felt _safe_. She felt, regardless of who she was, who he was, who they both were together, that there would always be a happy ending. Her tears dried on her face as they sat together, mindless of the passing time and wholly immersed in each other.

Rumplestiltskin sighed and dropped his head to rest atop hers. "Always loved," he promised softly, the words spoken almost automatically. "Always loved, always my own."

And they were. Despite what challenges they had met, and what struggles had yet to be faced, they had each other. There was love, companionship, _trust_—for them, that would be more than enough. Never broken, never beaten, _always _loved.


End file.
